Martha Elizabeth Duncan Walker Cook was an American author, editor, and translator. She served as an editor of the Continental Monthly from 1863 to 1864.
Background
Martha Elizabeth Duncan Walker Cook was born on July 23, 1806 in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, United States, the daughter of Jonathan Hoge and Mary (Duncan) Walker. Her father had been a soldier in the Revolution, and was afterward in succession, a judge of the common pleas, of the high court of errors and appeals of Pennsylvania, and of the federal district court. Robert J. Walker, her brother, was governor of the territory of Kansas under President Buchanan, secretary of the treasury under President Polk, and, during the Civil War, a prominent supporter of the Union cause. The family moved to Pittsburgh when Martha was about fourteen.
Education
Cook received most of her education from her father, who had a classical as well as a legal training. From him she derived intellectual and literary tastes and a passion for justice which she was never to lose. Her marked social qualities made her an excellent conversationalist and correspondent, and enabled her to draw out the best qualities of those who came in contact with her.
Career
From 1863 to 1864 Cook was editor of the Continental Monthly, founded in 1862 by James R. Gilmore “to advocate emancipation as a political necessity, ” and published in New York. Her admiration for the music and literature of Poland, her sense of outraged justice in the political sufferings of that country, and of the debt of America for the services of Polish émigrés in the Revolution made her a warm if occasionally a somewhat sentimental advocate of Poland’s cause. She was ready at all times with sympathy and with practical assistance and advice in aid of Polish emigrants, thus rendering a service which endeared her name to Poles at home and in America.
In 1871 she wrote an indorsement of the Appeal to the Friends of Poland in the United Slates of America by Count Ladislas Plater, for aid in establishing the Polish Historical Museum at the Château of Rapperswyl, Switzerland. She translated for American readers several works, including, from the French, Franz Liszt’s Life of Chopin (Boston, 1863); from the German, Guido Goerres’s Life of Joan of Arc which she published as a serial in the Freeman’s Journal ; and, from the French and German, The Undivine Comedy and Other Poems of Count Sigismund Krasinski. This last work was published in 1875, after her death, “in accordance with her desires and as a tribute of honor to disinterested labor and love of abstract justice. ”
With the exception of her rather desultory verse, Mrs. Cook’s literary activities seem to have been founded in practical humanitarian aims rather than in the pure joy of writing. Such examples of her style as are available display a vigorous if somewhat rhetorical manner. Her work, as a whole, bears the stamp of sincerity rather than of great literary value. She died in Hoboken in 1874.
Achievements
Martha Elizabeth Duncan Walker Cook was best known as a good linguist and translator of works of famous people from the German and French. She was also remembered for her contribution of numerous poems, sketches, and tales of transitory interest to the American periodical "Continental Monthly" which was devoted to literature and national policy.
At the age of eighteen Martha married Lieutenant William Cook, who became the chief engineer of the Philadelphia & Trenton Railroad (1836 - 1865) and brigadier-general of New Jersey militia from 1848 until his death in 1865.
